Any Technical Business Analysts - Looking for Advice

DezUk

DezUk

DezUk

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Location
Scotland
Afternoon Folks,

I have recently been offered a new role as a Technical Business Analyst, this is. big step up from general service desk work I have been doing over the last five years. I was a Business Analyst (including Technical) for over 15 years and just fell away from the industry. I have been wanting to get back into the role since 2019, so this is a great opportunity for me to shine and get my teeth stuck into a new role at a well established company.

Having been away from this kind of work for quite some time I am rather nervous about the role and how I will adapt to the change in pace and complexity of the work that is expected of me. So I thought I would ask for advice from other Technical BAs who are doing a similar job right now.

I am not 100% sure what exactly I will be doing, but from the interview I was able to get an understanding that the guy who I will be working under is currently writing all the user stories and doing lots of field mapping, so I think I will be taking the work load from him to allow him to crack on with other things. Having worked in previous roles I explained how I had done a ,to of field mapping work and making Restful API calls using SoapUi etc to get an understanding of how a database works for example.

I want to get some personal practice in before the role begins and was just looking for resources and online links to where I should start, for example is there anywhere I can get my head back into using SoapUI?

Also I feel my Excel skills may have dwindled a bit, so any decent resources for that aka V LOOKUP tables used to be a thing. I guess I am just after a bit of a head start and looking for how any other BAs would approach this?


Thanks
 
SoapUI smells like a potential red herring to me, is that just the way you have queried APIs previously for field mapping or do you know it's an expectation of this role to be working with APIs? As you might be doing field mapping not directly related to APIs e.g. for data migration or transformation. It might be more important to query databases directly for example.
 
Don't stress too much - just make sure you can use Excel etc. They will have their own process/way of doing things. It's more important to listen to training and crack on then. The guy training you should 100% want to get you up to speed asap so he can move on, so I wouldn't worry. Congratz on the job!!!
 
Excel is generally better to just learn as you go via google. Learning adhoc formulas in a course just doesn't stick unless you apply them regularly to scenarios.

On your vlookup though. Note it's been superceded by XLOOKUP which is much better and closer in function to the INDEX/MATCH combo.
 
I think as long as you've still got your basic skills you'll be fine, you'll probably spend more time getting your head around the specific way they do things and which systems they use for projects/tracking/mapping, etc more than anything else!
 
I don't think you can second guess how the existing guy that you'll be working with is working. You'll have to wait until he brings you up to speed then burn the midnight oil at that point.

Also every developer and project lead we've recently hired has used an entirely different toolset in their previous job. They all want us to switch to their way of doing, it like 10 people all pulling in different directions. Good luck 2nd guessing that. There is no common toolset for BA work, outside the basic office and project stuff.

I have worked as a technical business analyst (IT) and I don't think I've ever met another. Most BA I've worked, either internally or with vendors, have almost no technical
(IT Development) skills. Indeed in my experience, any time someone with technical IT skillset leave a BA roles, they've never been replaced with a BA with Technical skills.

I think you have to learn the internal process of the place.
 
I did have the job title Technical BA once. It was for a contract role at RBS. I was in charge of a bunch of regulatory reports that were churned out once a week. The system usually worked completely fine, and Monday to Thursday I had literally nothing to do, total doss. Occasionally needed to troubleshoot some bad data coming through.

Banked five figures a month for it. Ah, finance, those were the days.
 
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